by Alex Lamb
He filled her in on the rest of what he knew. It wasn’t much.
She nodded as she listened. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll remember more,’ she said. ‘It’ll all come back. That’s how it goes with your sort, or so I’m told.’
Will frowned at her. ‘Now are you going to tell me what’s happening?’
Elsa sighed. ‘You’ve got a lot to catch up on. The good news is that I know the end of that story of yours. Your sacrifice was worth it. You spared the human race. And you kept Snakepit safe from the Photurian invasion.’
‘Then what am I doing here?’ said Will.
‘I’ll try to make this simple,’ said Elsa. ‘First to know, you’re in a world that only has you on it. Lots and lots of copies of you.’
Will’s skin crawled at the implications even while his mind rebelled against them.
‘I wouldn’t exactly call you a copy,’ said Will, looking her up and down.
‘No,’ said Elsa, ‘and that’s kind of the point. I knew you were a Glitch when you kept staring at me like that. It was as if you’d never seen yourself female before.’
‘I hadn’t,’ said Will.
‘Exactly,’ replied Elsa with a dry smile. ‘You’ll have to get used to it, I’m afraid. Nearly fifty per cent of us are, these days. It’s a popular adjustment. Very much in demand, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
Will wrinkled his nose. ‘Adjustment?’
‘Choice, career, adaptation – whatever you want to call it. My point is, you need to tone down the boob-staring. A girl can get the wrong idea.’
‘Fine,’ said Will awkwardly, his arms folding tighter. ‘So you’re me.’
The woman seated before him was most definitely not Will Monet, whatever she might imagine, but it made no sense to quibble. The fact that she thought she was mattered more.
‘You don’t believe me,’ said Elsa.
Will shrugged. The idea of having copies felt deeply wrong. Beyond the visceral disgust the idea evoked lay a deeper concern. It shouldn’t have been possible, though he struggled to remember why.
‘Age fifteen, on Galatea, while you were in the Roboteer Academy, there was this one instructor for your Biome Engineering class,’ she said. ‘She was twice your age, at least—’
‘So you have my memories,’ Will snapped. ‘I get it.’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Elsa told him. ‘Memories aren’t identity – roboteers have been able to share memories since the first generation – but I don’t know any other way to make my point. We’re all you, though a lot of us look very different. I strongly recommend that you try to keep your reactions to that in check.’
‘What’s a Glitch?’ he said.
Elsa waved his question away. ‘We’ll get to that. First, you need to understand. For the last forty years, we’ve been a world entirely filled with instances of Will Kuno-Monet, and that’s had consequences.’
‘Forty?’ Will exclaimed. ‘Did you say forty years?’
‘As you think of them, yes,’ she said. ‘Though it’s thirty-three in Willworld years.’
‘Forty years of clones? How? Why? Where’s everyone else?’
‘The human race, you mean?’ said Elsa, making quotes in the air. ‘That’s a difficult question. Not here. In any case, a world of copies is going to be very different from what you’re used to. For a start, individuals are thought of as threads, not people.’
She stared at him earnestly, and Will had the sense that she was embarking on something of a prepared speech – one she’d been waiting for the chance to give.
‘Our bodies are largely interchangeable,’ she said. ‘Social position is defined by role and experience, not accident of birth. This means that anything that makes your thread unique is a jealously guarded commodity. Remember that, Will. We’re pushing to become different. All ten billion of us.’
Ten billion. He struggled to wrap his mind around the number. Nowhere but Earth had ever supported a human population that large.
‘Each and every Will is working at uniqueness,’ she said. ‘Keep that in mind and you’ll have an easier time absorbing this. And while we’re at it, we need to get you a new nick so you don’t make it obvious you’ve just been born every time you open your mouth.’
‘What’s wrong with Jason?’ said Will.
‘Glitches always say Jason,’ said Elsa. ‘It’s the first name we think of when we know we have memory loss. You got it from a static-flick you saw decades ago, back when you were still obsessed with historic video. Most Glitches don’t even realise where they’re pulling it from.’
‘Okay,’ said Will, his voice rising in frustration. ‘Let’s try again. What’s a Glitch?’
Elsa exhaled heavily. ‘A Glitch is what you are. A Will-instance with no memories from after the Waking. For reasons we don’t understand, the planet makes one from time to time.’
‘So I’ve happened before?’ said Will. ‘Like this?’
‘Lots of times. And I’m warning you now, you’re not popular.’
‘I got that impression,’ said Will. ‘Want to tell me why?’
‘There are Wills on this world who … go bad. They become destructive and acquisitive, like a cancer. It usually happens when one of us gives up hope and becomes infected with bitterness at life. Beware of bitterness, Will.’
‘I got that part already! Reactions in check. Keep talking.’
She shot him a weary look. ‘If I didn’t know how afraid you are right now, I’d call you out for being rude. As it is, I’m cutting you some slack. But give me some room, okay? It’s not easy to boil forty years of history into one speech.’
‘Sorry,’ said Will. He glanced away at the ridiculous lemon-coloured furnishings and tried to compose himself. The entire situation felt too foreign, too claustrophobic. Rather like this little yellow boudoir.
‘If you’re me, why in Gal’s name does your room look like this, anyway?’ he blurted. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘To remind myself that I’m female, you asshat!’ Elsa snapped. ‘Why do you think?’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘God, the baseline me is annoying. Look, previous Glitches have done a lot of damage, okay? Most people don’t distinguish between Glitches and Cancers. Some of us, though, think Glitches have a purpose. We think they’re here to say something about how our society has turned out. But that’s a minority opinion. You’re just lucky that this time you happened to meet someone who felt that way before the others got to you.’
‘Why is it like this?’ Will demanded. ‘Who made this place?’
She glared at him in exasperation. ‘Who do you think? You did, Will. Who else is there?’
‘I can’t accept that.’
‘Please, just listen,’ said Elsa. ‘Before I get Ronno back in here to shoot you. Because you still don’t know the worst of it. As well as us individual instances, there’s a … a meta-Will, a version we use to keep the peace. We call him Balance. Just like your subminds used to feed into your consciousness when you were flying a ship, we feed into Balance. His job is to fight threats, Will. And as far as most of us are concerned, you’re a threat. He’ll seek you out, if he can, and he has the power of the whole world behind him.’
‘So Balance is Snakepit.’
‘We call it the Willworld these days,’ said Elsa, ‘but that’s right. And if you don’t stay clear of Balance, he’ll take you apart. He’s a god, Will. An angry you on a planetary scale.’
Will buried his eyes in his hands and sank gently down the wall. There was too much to take in and he liked none of it. He wasn’t even sure how much to believe.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ he said. ‘What about IPSO? Wasn’t there ever a rescue mission?’
‘People have opinions about that, but to be honest, we have no idea,’ said Elsa. ‘Suffice it to say, they’re not here. As far as you’re concerned, they’re just gone.’
‘So what in fuck’s name am I supposed to do?’ said Will. ‘Hide? Die?’
‘I’m goi
ng to send you to the Proustian Underground in Mettaburg,’ she said. She got up from the bed and pulled him to his feet. ‘They have a system. They can teach you how to lie low. They’ll give you a better sense of what’s going on.’
‘Can they tell me how to get the hell off Snakepit?’
‘No promises, but they’ll be able to do more than I can.’ She seized his hand and fixed him with a serious gaze. ‘I know this is hard, but here’s what you need to do. After you leave this room, walk straight down the tunnel the way you came, through the poppies, until you find a kind of graveyard. Then pick an empty slot and lie down in it. Don’t worry if it looks wet.’
Will stared at her. ‘In a grave?’
‘In effect, yes,’ she said. ‘Unless you want to walk through about five hundred klicks of tunnels. Just lie down, shut your eyes and summon your home node.’
‘I tried that,’ said Will. ‘It doesn’t work. Something’s wrong.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s just your connection to soft-space opening. You don’t have a single node any more, Will. You’ve got a whole world. When your link opens and you go virtual, walk straight forwards. Whatever you do, don’t step backwards.’
Will frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘You’ll end up here again, maybe with company. One step back takes you to a map of local threads. Two steps dumps you in the closest available body to your lifting site. One step forward, on the other hand, gets you to the soft-space environment itself, which is where you need to go. Just keep moving, follow cues and only ask oracles if you absolutely can’t find your way.’
‘Oracles?’
‘You’ll figure it out,’ she told him. ‘When you get to the city, seek out the Radical Hill District. Look for the Old Slam Bar on Campari Street. Got it? Ask for Mr Brown.’
‘Old Slam Bar,’ said Will weakly. ‘Brown.’
‘Right. All you need to do between now and then is find your way without freaking out and hurting someone. Think you can manage that?’
‘Given how today has gone so far, I honestly have no idea,’ he said.
Elsa let loose a dry laugh. ‘Fair answer. Okay, time to go.’ She blinked and clicked her fingers. ‘Wait. You still need a nick. Something that says harmless and absent-minded more than lost and dangerous.’ She tapped a finger to her lips. ‘Got it. How about Cuthbert?’
Will wrinkled his nose. ‘I hate it.’
‘Good – that makes it all the more natural. And besides, you’ve got bigger problems, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Fair point,’ said Will, looking away. ‘And thank you. Sorry if I was rude about your room. It’s been a difficult morning.’
‘I can only imagine,’ she said and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Being anything other than baseline takes work but it’s worth it – I like what I’ve grown into. Anyway, good luck out there. Try not to die. And hurry. If Ronno and Tars report you, this place will be crawling with Balance agents in minutes.’
She opened the door and pushed him gently through it.
‘If you make it, come back for coffee some time, but now you have to start walking before you get us both killed.’
As soon as he was outside, she pulled the door shut behind him. Will stood there, staring at the yellow slatted walls of the coffee stand, and felt utterly at sea. Then, with a grimace of resolve, he set off running back the way he’d come, to find himself a grave.
2.2: NADA
In the agonising wake of the Project Earth debacle, Nada Rien visited the Yunus on Noether. Part of her baulked at the senselessness of reporting in person. On top of the constant chafe of maintaining an individual identity, making the trip felt like an onerous imposition. She would have to look at him with a pair of flesh eyes and drip-feed information at him using a physical mouth. Such antics should never have become necessary. But they all had to do their part to fight War Fatigue. So Nada took a shuttle down from her flagship, the recently named PSS Infinite Order, and flew into the spaceport at Curie where the Yunus was engaged in assessment communion with the local population.
She acquired a transit pod and watched the city approach through the stained windows as the elderly machine juddered along. Like many Photurian colonies, Curie was a mixture of ugly old human towers and new home-tubes filling the dead ground between them like joyful black roots. Such cities always struck her as overgrown graveyards – places where exuberant ivy worked busily to cover up the sadness and irrelevance of the past. It couldn’t happen too soon.
Usually she delighted in watching the irresistible spread of true Photurian habitats. But here she could also make out newer, less-welcome structures. Soft, black cubes had been erected since her last visit – an attempt to grow Photurian tunnel-matrix over hideous human-style construction lattices. She shivered. Was this what they’d been reduced to? Building deliberately uncomfortable homes to stop their inhabitants from sliding into bliss too soon? It sickened her that such projects were deemed necessary.
She opened her mouth wide and screamed as she often did at times like this. Why couldn’t humanity just give up already? They were ruining it for themselves. Had the species been capable of a moment’s courage or selflessness, they’d all have converted long ago. As it was, they insisted on clinging to their useless instincts like the mindless biorobots they were, and consequently everyone had suffered.
Nada composed herself by ramming her fists against the pod’s filthy glass until the pain from bloody knuckles settled her mood. It had been a rough month. She’d built up a lot of hope around the rescue of Earth’s population and come away with nothing but empty hands.
So here they were again, still short on converts, fighting back the tide of Fatigue and making compromises that took them ever further from perfect unity. She examined her reflection in the glass and found it depressing just how human she looked in that moment. Black hair. Brown eyes. A ship-suit. A face showing stress indicators. It was a sign of how badly she was struggling that she’d even noticed herself at all.
She forced her attention outwards again and then groaned as she realised the pod was delivering her to one of the human structures. These days, the Yunus was seldom found in a true home. He was always out and about, fighting the good fight. At times, it exhausted her.
The doors sighed open and Nada stepped out into an empty corridor lined with blotchy wall-panels and filled with the sputtering hiss of unmaintained recyclers. Dusty, yellowish light poured in from the window at the far end. Behind the hiss lay the silence that increasingly filled all Phote worlds – the sound of too much peace too soon.
Following the directions that had been deposited in her mind, she strode down the passageway to a large room at the far end. Ranks of seats wrapped a stage where the Yunus was communing with the Saved. The space must have been a theatre once, she realised, a box for conducting pointless human art rituals. Now it was being put to a far finer purpose.
She marched down the shallow banks of steps past rows of mouldering seats where a scattering of Photurians sat, waiting to be processed. The Yunus stood on the stage under a spotlight, bright orange and seven feet tall, white hair pouring down his back in a mane. His proud, patrician face bore a static expression of confidence and pride. A line of thirty recently converted children were walking placidly onto the dais to meet him, their eyes full of worship.
As the first human to be successfully Saved, the Yunus occupied a special place in the Photurian Utopia. His reasoning and beliefs had formed the basis on which their society was constructed. Consequently, he was instantiated as necessary, usually in improved formats, to help inform collective decision-making. Since the recent disbanding of the mass-mind, his instances had become more frequently deployed than ever.
Nada sat down near the front and checked the local mind-temple for details of the proceedings. Apparently, a modified nestship transporting families had been rescued between St Andrews and Galatea. After emergency Saving, the anthrocapital had been rerouted and brought down for assignment.
She shrugged the feeling off. Comparative notions of social achievement were a worthless side effect of her previous identity. It was beneath her to let it contaminate her day.
‘Young converts,’ Yunus told the children, ‘welcome to the Utopia. You are no doubt enjoying your new-found enlightenment, but better is yet to come as we allocate you useful functions. You are especially prized in these dark days. Your neuroplasticity lends us strength and hastens the coming of Immaculate Joy. Step forward one at a time to let me determine your utility, starting with the unit on the left.’
A little boy of about five approached him. The Yunus placed a hand on the child’s face and stood still for a second.
‘Your aptitude is low,’ said the Yunus. ‘Your brain will be removed and inserted in a harvester ship for warp-piloting purposes.’
The boy beamed with delight. ‘Thank you, O Yunus!’ he said.
The Yunus dealt with each of them in turn, picking out the rejects and saying nothing to the rest.
‘You will be reformatted for manual labour in space … Your brain will become the guiding intelligence of a food factory … You will be transformed into a flight-management system at the local spaceport.’ After examining the last child, he addressed the assembled group. ‘Those who have been assigned may go directly to surgery for deconstruction.’
Four delighted children marched off the stage with eyes full of pride. The Yunus observed the others.
‘The rest of you are relatively high-functioning individuals. You will participate in a bold new social experiment in which you will age at a normal human rate and emerge into adulthood without alteration or integration into the mass-mind.’
Nada watched the children’s expressions slide in horror as they came to understand their fate. Some began to cry. From the moment they’d been rounded up and Saved, the sacred bacteria would have been opening their minds to joy, infusing them with love and hope – hope that had now largely been dashed.
